


easy as pie

by parrishsrubberplant (genus_species)



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Baking, M/M, epic baking fails, piecrust discourse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-04 22:49:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15157319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genus_species/pseuds/parrishsrubberplant
Summary: Kent isn't jealous that Alexei won the Stanley Cup. He's not. It's just--Alexei keeps sending snaps of Bittle's pies, and, well...how hard can it be to make a pie, anyway?





	easy as pie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eden22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eden22/gifts).



Okay, he can admit it. Kent is jealous.

It starts after the Falcs win the Stanley Cup. He’s not jealous about that. How could he be? He has his own Stanley Cup ring locked safely away in his safe deposit box. He doesn’t begrudge Alexei--or even Jack--that triumph in the slightest. They deserve it. Like Steve Dangle said, they weren’t the best team going into the playoffs but they certainly are coming out and that’s what really matters.

That, and Alexei standing so carefully on the red carpet, teammates on either side of him, braced and ready to catch him if he topples. Alexei holds the Cup above his head and leans into his crutches. Kent’s trying not to think about the fact that Alexei might need to have knee surgery.

He gets a series of increasingly drunken and ridiculous snaps throughout the night. Everyone’s lit up like Christmas trees except Kirkpatrick, who doesn’t drink for personal reasons. But Kirky is flushed and happy, his arm around Alexei’s shoulders and his red-gold beard against Alexei’s shoulder. Kent can’t grow a beard that color, even though he admires how sexy it looks. 

Alexei seems to be cuddling everybody. He’s a tactile guy and Kent isn’t be jealous of that. He loves the ease of Alexei’s affection, the way he doesn’t do that horrible American thing of never touching anybody.

It’s the pie. Kent is jealous of the pie. Alexei describes Bittle’s pie in terms he usually only uses when talking about Kent’s hockey, over the top, ludicrous English adjectives that make Kent laugh even as he bristles.

He vaguely remembers meeting Bittle at Samwell. He had spent more time chilling with Lardo and Ransom and Holster anyway because he could tell they liked him. And if they didn’t like him for himself, it was okay that they liked him just because he remembered them. They were interesting people; it wasn’t hard to remember them.

Bittle had been small and blond, and the source of truly excellent chocolate chip walnut oatmeal protein powder cookies.

It amuses the fuck out of Kent that Jack and Bitty are actually together--clearly, Jack has a type and that type is small blond hockey forwards. Even though Kent’s taller, if he remembers their selfie and Bitty’s stats correctly. Kent doesn’t mind that Jack has friends who have his back, even though Kent is at the bar with Carl (fucking douchcanoe Carl) and the others at the moment of the win and everything after.

It’s the pie, the fucking pie, which it seems like Alexei loves more than anything, even Kent.

After receiving the fifth snap in a row of the ‘stupendous’ pie, Kent starts Googling. How hard can it be to make a pie?

The first thing he learns--and he should have known this but he has been pretty religiously ignoring dessert since the age of ten or so, when he got serious about macros and hockey and the good and bad kinds of calories--is that there are a lot of different kinds of pie.

Kent starts scrolling back through his text chain. What kinds of pie has Alexei mentioned? Tri-berry, which Kent thinks might be a little advanced for a first attempt. Maybe he should master one type of berry before he tries for three at a time. Lemon meringue, which like hell is he trying anything that involves separating eggs. Not even to impress Alexei. Plus, he’s not a huge fan of lemon as a flavor, except in marinades for chicken.

Apple pie keeps popping up. Maple apple pie, Jack’s favorite. Kent tests his emotions. There was a time where thinking about Jack felt like the emotional equivalent of pressing on a fresh bruise. He spent a while at the colorful but essentially painless stage and still feels some occasional twinges. The ache of losing Jack is--well, he’d like to say it’s gone. Kent doesn’t want Jack anymore, not the way he had before, the combination of wanting him and wanting to be him that burrowed under his skin.

But--Bittle. Bittle is small and blond and now Alexei won’t stop talking about his pies.

Apple pie, Kent decides. And then--pie crust. Apparently, you can just buy it at the grocery store. But, absolutely no one on the Internet thinks buying a pie crust is something you should do, at least not on any of the food blogs Kent’s been reading.

It’s easy, they say. And Kent doesn’t have a college degree but he passed high school--would have graduated with honors, if he didn’t have so many absences because of hockey--and he can do this.

The first pie crust explodes in a shower of crumbs across his counter as Kent tries to roll it out. He tightens his grip around the neck of the wine bottle and scowls at the malfunctioning crust. (Wine bottles, he learned during his emergency Google search, make a decent substitute if one doesn’t own a rolling pin.) Kit sniffs a crumb on the floor and then tries to eat it. “Stop,” Kent says, “you’re not a dog,” but Kit doesn’t listen to him. She never does.

The second pie crust is so wet that it sticks to Kent’s fingers when he tries to roll it out. He ends up covering himself and the countertop with flour as he tries to fix it.

He goes ahead and adds premade pie crusts to his grocery delivery order. Maybe he can master the filling part and circle back around to the crust.

The apples turn out crunchy in the first filling he makes. He thought apples were just apples, but there’s a difference between cooking apples and eating apples. Who knew?

He sticks his fork in the center of the pie like he’s planting a conquering flag. The worst part is, he’s going to have to eat all of this, crunchy filling and all. He can’t possibly make his teammates eat it--they’re going to chirp him to death for baking in the first place, and then Ben the team nutritionist is going to kill Kent for giving everybody that much sugar, and then various trainers are going to resuscitate him so they can kill him again. Kent tries another bite of the pie. Maybe it isn’t as bad as he thought.

It is. Maybe apple pie freezes?

The second filling is liquid. The apples are partially cooked, on their way to delicious mush. But the slices don’t lift cleanly out of the pie plate, and the bottom of it is full of liquid. But at least it’s a small improvement? Kent is pleased. 

This pie could be shared with teammates. (Except Carl.) It’s a little ugly around the edges, and too soupy, but Kent can excuse that. It looks homemade? It’s clear he made it, and not the bakery? Maybe he can foist it off on the equipment manager and the ice crew, who don’t have diet plans. Kent is pleased with his progress.

Pleased, until Alexei snaps another picture of one of Bittle’s pies. The crust is perfectly golden and the filling is gooey but holding its shape. The slice of pie sits on the plate in a perfect triangle. It looks delicious. It looks about a thousand times better than anything Kent has yet made.

Kent tries one more time. Instead of just flour, cornstarch. Instead of just cornstarch, instant tapioca. He’s determined not to end up with a soupy filling.

Kit knocks over one of his succulents just as the timer goes off. By the time Kent cleans shards of ceramic off the floor, the crust has burned. Kent stabs the final product dubiously with a fork. The filling has congealed all right. If he dropped a slice on his kitchen floor it would probably bounce.

Only one thing left to do: swallow his pride and eat humble pie. Kent DM’s Bitty a picture of his failure. “Please,” he writes. “Help?”

Bitty doesn’t reply for several hours, just enough time for Kent to work himself up into a really good freakout. Is he imposing? Will Jack mind? What if Bitty thinks he’s an idiot? He’s been doing this since he was a child, if his vlogs are anything to go by. Bitty could probably make pie crust blind drunk with his hand tied behind his back. He’s going to think Kent is an idiot.

“What is that?” Bitty writes, and Kent breathes out a sigh of relief.

“A pie,” he writes back, and doesn’t put a question mark because he is a strong, confident man with a Stanley Cup ring and he believes in himself.

“Wow,” Bitty says, and just like that, Kent is in familiar territory. He’s been getting chirped by hockey players his whole entire life.

“Please teach me your ways,” Kent says.

Bitty responds with a flurry of links. Pie crust. Troubleshooting a pie crust. His maple apple pie video (Kent’s seen that one. Jack’s hands are in it. Is it sad that Kent can recognize Jack Zimmermann by his hands?).

“Thanks,” Kent says.

Bitty sends back, “Out of curiosity, why the sudden need to make a pie?”

Kent has a sudden overwhelming urge to explain what he sees when he looks at Alexei, to explain the way his stomach twists with something sharper than envy and warmer than guilt. The way Alexei’s hands are bigger than Kent’s, his fingertips extending well beyond Kent’s when their hands are pressed together palm to palm. Alexei’s heavy-lidded eyes and the way he blinks slowly at Kent when he’s very turned on or very sleepy. The bright sharp shock of his smile.

“I want to make it for someone special,” Kent sends back finally. Deep down inside, he’s a dork and he owns that.

Kent reads the articles and watches the videos. Bitty’s so much younger in some of them. It isn’t simple to describe how Kent knows that. It’s nothing so obvious as the shape of his face or the length of his hair. It’s more the look in his eyes: friendly and open and unafraid. Samwell did that for him. Even though Bitty struggled while he was there with his academics and his hockey, it was still a place where he could be himself completely and not worry about what people would think.

He flips back to one of Bittle’s most recent videos. He’s showing his viewers how to make Neapolitan shortbread cookies, three flavors (strawberry, vanilla, chocolate) stacked together. There’s a distance now, between him and the camera. He’s polite and professional, but not intimate.

Kent goes back to the pie crust video. Bittle is warm and open, smiling at the camera. At one point he nearly knocks it off the counter and laughs at himself. He’s doing this for himself. He’s having fun.

For the pie crust, there’s a couple of things Kent can now try: chilling the crust after assembling it and adding a bit less water. (He should have kept count of the number of tablespoons he added. Who knew?) He skips the direction to use only imported European butter for the flakiest crust. He can definitely afford it but he...doesn’t want to waste the butter he already has? Doesn’t care quite enough to start over again? Something like that.

For the filling, Bitty peels and slices his apples using a large kitchen implement that turns with a hand crank and looks like a medieval torture device. Kent figures a knife was good enough for the Pilgrims or whoever the fuck first put apples in a pie and it’ll be good enough for him too. He peels the apples. For the fun of it he tries to get a long spiral going. He turns the apple with one hand, scrapes the peeler with the other, and marvels how his hands seem to just know what to do. 

He has vague memories of his grandmother doing something like this, peeling a whole apple in one long string.

The knife bites easily through the apple’s soft flesh. It thunks against the counter as Kent chops apples into small chunks. He offers a piece to Kit and she turns her head and stalks away. Following Bitty’s advice Kent halves the amount of cinnamon and nutmeg in his recipe.

He abandons the process for a moment, washes the sticky apple juice off his hands, and goes to lay on the couch and check his phone. Kit is sprawled out in a patch of sun. She chirrups as he reaches out and pets her. “Hey, princess.”

Kit makes another soft murping noise. Kent scrolls through Instagram. Bitty has made perfectly decorated rainbow cupcakes, the frosting impeccably swirled in the colors of the Pride flag. Kent wonders how many Jack allowed himself to have. Half of one, maybe. A quarter. A bite. Jack has always been good at self-denial.

He snaps a picture of Kit to his followers. Kent hasn’t shared his pie adventures on social media. Somehow it feels too personal. He doesn’t like to be bad at anything, and he’s still not very good at pie.

‘Not very good’ is a polite understatement. He has yet to produce anything edible.

He takes the ball of plastic-wrapped pie dough out of the fridge. It’s cool to the touch.

Kent picks up the rolling pin and hopes that maybe this time it won’t be a disaster.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to [ahausonfire](http://ahausonfire.tumblr.com/) for beta-ing!
> 
> Also, in case anyone cares, here's how _I_ make piecrust. Take a stick (1/4 cup) of unsalted butter out of the freezer. Forget about it for several hours or until it's completely softened. Mix together ~2 cups of all-purpose flour and 1/2 tsp salt. Mush in the butter with your fingers until everything is nice and crumbly (you could probably also use two forks for this). Wash your hands. Sigh about the fact that butter is greasy, who knew? Add ~6 tablespoons of cold water and mix until the dough begins to form a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and put in the fridge. Chill until firm (at least 30 minutes).


End file.
